TRIBUTE 


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AT,): 


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TO 

Eben  Sperry  Stearns,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

CHANCELLOR  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY,  AND  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 
NORMAL  COLLEGE  AT  NASHVILLE,  TENNESSEE, 

AT  THE 


ANNUAL  MEETING  OF  THE  TRUSTEES 


OF  THE 

PEABODY  EDUCATION  FUND, 


New  York,  5 October,  1887. 


CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON. 

aSmbersttg  Press. 

1887. 


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TRIBUTE. 


At  the  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Peabody  Trustees 
of  Southern  Education,  at  New  York,  on  the  5th 
of  October,  1887,  the  Chairman,  Hon.  Robert 
C.  Winthrop,  in  the  course  of  his  Introductory 
Address,  announced  the  death  of  Dr.  Stearns  as 
follows : — 

I was  not  a little  shocked,  Gentlemen,  on  the  nth  of 
April  last,  by  a telegram  from  Nashville  announcing  that 
Dr.  Stearns,  the  President  of  our  Normal  College  and 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Nashville  University,  had  died  sud- 
denly on  that  very  morning.  I was  not  altogether  una- 
' ware  that  for  some  months  previously  he  had  been  less 
well  than  could  have  been  wished.  A letter  had  reached 
me,  dated  the  19th  of  February,  which  he  had  been  unable 
to  write  with  his  own  hand,  and  in  which  he  spoke  of  him- 
self as  having  suffered  from  a severe  bilious  attack ; and  I 
had  not  failed  to  notice  with  concern  that  on  the  following 
25th  of  March  he  was  not  sufficiently  recovered  to  pre- 
side at  the  Commemorative  Services  which  he  had  so  lov- 
ingly arranged,  in  honor  of  our  Founder,  for  the  twentieth 
anniversary  of  the  date  of  our  original  Letter  of  Trust,  and 
that  the  Address  which  he  had  prepared  for  that  occasion 


fa  598  \ 


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had  been  read  for  him  by  his  friend  Professor  Penfield.  But 
no  impression  of  any  immediate  or  early  danger  had  been 
communicated  to  me,  or,  indeed,  had  been  conceived  by 
those  around  him.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  thought  by 
them  and  by  himself  that  his  health  had  been  improving 
from  day  to  day;  and  more  than  once  even  on  the  very 
last  day  of  his  life,  — the  ioth  of  April,  — he  was  on  his 
balcony,  conversing  cheerfully  and  confidently  with  his 
family.  Before  sunrise  the  next  morning  he  had  passed 
peacefully  away.  His  widow  and  children,  with  his  re- 
mains, reached  Boston  on  the  15th,  when  Dr.  Green 
accompanied  me  to  the  Albany  station  to  meet  them, 
and  the  burial  took  place  at  Mount  Auburn  the  same 
afternoon. 

The  name  of  Eben  Sperry  Stearns  is  to  be  seen  in  capi- 
tals on  the  roll  of  the  Class  of  1841  of  Harvard  University, 
from  which  he  received  a degree  of  Master  of  Arts  in  1845. 
He  owed  his  degrees  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  and  Doctor 
of  Laws  to  other  colleges ; but  he  always  expressed  a 
special  interest  in  the  welfare  and  honor  of  Harvard,  at 
which  his  father  and  grandfather  and  great-grandfather, 
and  more  than  one  of  his  own  brothers,  had  been  gradu- 
ated before  him.  Born  in  Bedford,  Mass.,  on  the  23d  of 
December,  1819,  the  son  of  a Congregational  minister, 
his  mind  was  early  turned  to  the  subject  of  teaching,  and 
he  entered  on  that  line  of  life  very  soon  after  he  had  fin- 
ished his  four  years  at  Cambridge.  He  was  successively 
employed  as  a teacher  in  a female  seminary  at  Ipswich, 
in  a private  school  at  West  Newton,  and  in  other  schools 
at  Newburyport  and  at  Portland.  In  1849  he  was  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  State  Normal  School  of  Massachusetts, 
— the  first  of  its  kind  on  American  soil,  — which  he 
administered  with  great  success  for  some  years.  It  was 
in  this  connection  that  he  became  associated  with  our  late 
eminent  General  Agent,  Dr.  Barnas  Sears,  — at  that  time 


5 


the  Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education,  — 
whose  appreciation  of  his  qualifications  and  character  was 
so  signally  manifested  a quarter  of  a century  afterwards. 
In  1875,  when  Dr.  Sears  first  took  in  hand  the  establish- 
ment of  a Normal  College  at  Nashville,  under  the  auspices 
of  this  Board  of  Trustees  for  Southern  Education,  he  at 
once  selected  Dr.  Stearns  as  the  most  competent  and  de- 
sirable person  for  the  presidency  of  that  institution.  Dr. 
Stearns  received  that  appointment  accordingly,  and  was 
also  made  the  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Nashville; 
and  in  these  capacities  he  did  faithful  and  excellent  service 
for  the  remaining  eleven  or  twelve  years  of  his  life.  He  met 
with  not  a few  impediments  and  discouragements  during 
the  early  part  of  this  period,  and  his  health  and  nerves 
were  not  always  equal  to  the  anxieties  and  labors  which 
devolved  upon  him.  But  he  persevered  devotedly  to  the 
end,  and  under  his  untiring  care  the  College  had  become 
almost  all  that  either  he  or  we  could  have  expected  or 
desired  it  to  be. 

As  Chairman  of  this  Board  I was  in  very  frequent  corre- 
spondence with  him  on  the  subject  of  the  institution,  and 
I rarely  failed  of  more  than  one  personal  consultation  with 
him,  summer  after  summer,  and  almost  every  summer, 
during  his  visits  to  his  old  home  in  Massachusetts.  It 
affords  me  a melancholy  pleasure,  now  that  he  is  gone,  to 
bear  witness  to  the  fidelity  and  zeal  with  which  he  dis- 
charged his  responsible  and  often  difficult  duties,  and 
to  the  earnest  interest  which  he  ever  evinced  in  promot- 
ing the  welfare  of  our  great  Southern  Normal  College. 
His  name  must  always  be  most  honorably  associated 
with  the  rise  and  progress  of  that  institution,  which  it  is 
hoped  and  believed  is  destined  to  be  one  of  the  perma- 
nent monuments  of  the  bounty  and  beneficence  of  George 
Peabody.  It  is  due  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Stearns,  and 
to  the  feelings  of  his  widow  and  children,  that  the  Records 


6 


of  this  Board  should  contain  some  expression  of  our  sense 
of  the  services  he  had  rendered  to  the  great  work  in  which 
we  are  engaged,  and  of  the  loss  which  we  have  sustained 
by  his  death. 

Whereupon,  on  motion  of  Gov.  James  D.  Porter, 
seconded  by  Bishop  W hipple,  it  was  unanimously 

Voted , That  the  foregoing  extract  from  the  Chairman’s 
Address  be  communicated  to  the  widow  and  family  of  Dr. 
Stearns  as  an  expression  of  the  sympathy  of  the  Trustees 
in  their  bereavement,  and  of  the  grateful  sense  of  the 
services  of  Dr.  Stearns  entertained  by  the  Board. 


\ 


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